Where microaggressions really come from: A sociological account

I just read the most extraordinary paper by two sociologists — Bradley Campbell and Jason Manning — explaining why concerns about microaggressions have erupted on many American college campuses in just the past few years. In brief: We’re beginning a second transition of moral cultures. The first major transition happened in the 18th and 19th centuries when most Western societies moved away from cultures of honor (where people must earn honor and must therefore avenge insults on their own) to cultures of dignity in which people are assumed to have dignity and don’t need to earn it. They foreswear violence, turn to courts or administrative bodies to respond to major transgressions, and for minor transgressions they either ignore them or attempt to resolve them by social means. There’s no more dueling.

Campbell and Manning describe how this culture of dignity is now giving way to a new culture of victimhood in which people are encouraged to respond to even the slightest unintentional offense, as in an honor culture. But they must not obtain redress on their own; they must appeal for help to powerful others or administrative bodies, to whom they must make the case that they have been victimized. It is the very presence of such administrative bodies, within a culture that is highly egalitarian and diverse (i.e., many college campuses) that gives rise to intense efforts to identify oneself as a fragile and aggrieved victim. This is why we have seen the recent explosion of concerns about microaggressions, combined with demands for trigger warnings and safe spaces, that Greg Lukianoff and I wrote about in The Coddling of the American Mind.

Later this month I will write a blog post laying out the implications of this extraordinary article. But first I want to make the ideas in the article widely available. It’s a fairly long article, so I provide below an outline of its main sections with extensive quotations from each section. My hope is that you can read the text below and get 80% of the value of the article in just 7 minutes.

In what follows, all text is copied and pasted directly from the published article, [except for comments from me, which are in brackets.] I have also bolded the lines that are most important for understanding the phenomena described in The Coddling of the American Mind. The key idea is that the new moral culture of victimhood fosters “moral dependence” and an atrophying of the ability to handle small interpersonal matters on one’s own. At the same time that it weakens individuals, it creates a society of constant and intense moral conflict as people compete for status as victims or as defenders of victims.

1) INTRODUCTION
Conflict occurs when someone defines another’s behavior as deviant – as immoral or otherwise objectionable…. Conflict and social control are both ubiquitous and diverse, as the issues that spark grievances and ways of handling them vary enormously across social settings. Here we address changing patterns of conflict in modern societies by focusing on a new species of social control that is increasingly common at American colleges and universities: the publicizing of micro aggressions.[p.693]… As we dissect this phenomenon, then, we first address how it fits into a larger class of conflict tactics in which the aggrieved seek to attract and mobilize the support of third parties. We note that these tactics sometimes involve building a case for action by documenting, exaggerating, or even falsifying offenses. We address the social logic by which such tactics operate and the social conditions likely to produce them – those that encourage aggrieved individuals to rely on third parties to manage their conflicts, but make obtaining third party support problematic. We then turn to the content of the grievances expressed in microaggression complaints and related forms of social control, which focus on inequality and emphasize the dominance of offenders and the oppression of the aggrieved.

We argue that the social conditions that promote complaints of oppression and victimization overlap with those that promote case-building attempts to attract third parties. When such social conditions are all present in high degrees, the result is a culture of victimhood in which individuals and groups display high sensitivity to slight, have a tendency to handle conflicts through complaints to third parties, and seek to cultivate an image of being victims who deserve assistance. [See DeScioli & Kurzban for more on the urgency of appealing to third parties] We contrast the culture of victimhood with cultures of honor and cultures of dignity.[p.695]

2) DEPENDENCE ON THIRD PARTIESA) Gossip, Protest, and Complaint
Of the many ways people bring their grievances to the attention of third parties, perhaps the most common is to complain privately to family, friends, co-workers, and acquaintances. This is called gossip – “evaluative talk about a person who is not present.” … Both individualized and collective conflicts might be brought to the attention of authority figures asked to punish the offender or otherwise handle the case. Small children often bring their complaints to adults, for example, while adults might bring their complaints to the legal system (e.g., Baumgartner 1992). Explaining the rise of microaggression complaints, then, requires that we explain the conditions that lead individuals to bring their problems before third parties. We suggest that the same factors that increase reliance on third parties in general encourage the public documenting of grievances in particular.

B) The Structural Logic of Moral Dependence
There are several circumstances that make individuals more likely to rely on third parties rather than their own devices. One factor is law. Historically, the growth of law has undermined various forms of unilateral social control. In times and places with little or no legal authority to protect property, settle disputes, or punish wrongdoers, people frequently handle such problems on their own through violent aggression – a phenomenon that students of law and social control refer to as “self-help”… Legal authority can potentially supplant other mechanisms of social control, from milder forms of self-help to negotiated compromise and mediation. Insofar as people come to depend on law alone, their willingness or ability to use other forms of conflict management may atrophy, leading to a condition Black refers to as “legal overdependency” (1989:77).[p.697]

Similarly, a college or university administration might handle conflicts among students and faculty. Educational institutions not only police such academic misconduct as cheating and plagiarism, but increasingly enact codes forbidding interpersonal offenses…. But note that reliance on third parties extends beyond reliance on authorities. Even if no authoritative action is taken, gossip and public shaming can be powerful sanctions. And even those who ultimately seek authoritative action might have to mobilize the support of additional third parties to convince authorities to act. Indeed, the core of much modern activism, from protest rallies to leaflet campaigns to publicizing offenses on websites, appears to be concerned with rallying enough public support to convince authorities to act. [p.698]

3)CAMPAIGNING FOR SUPPORT
A second notable feature of microaggression websites is that they do not merely call attention to a single offense, but seek to document a series of offenses that, taken together, are more severe than any individual incident. As the term “micro” implies, the slights and insults are acts that many would consider to be only minor offenses and that others might not deem offensive at all. As noted on the Oberlin Microaggressions site, for example, its purpose is to show that acts of “racist, heterosexist/ homophobic, anti-Semitic, classist, ableists, sexist/cissexist speech etc.” are “not simply isolated incidents, but rather part of structural inequalities” (Oberlin Microaggressions 2013). These sites hope to mobilize and sustain support for a moral crusade against such injustice by showing that the injustices are more severe than observers might realize.

A) The Structural Logic of Partisanship
Black’s theory of partisanship identifies two conditions that make support from third parties more likely. First, third parties are more likely to act as partisans when they are socially closer to one side of the conflict than to the other, as they take the side of the socially closer disputant (Black 1998:126)… Any social tie or social similarity a third party shares with one disputant but not the other increases the chance of partisanship. Second, third parties are more likely to act as partisans when one side of a conflict is higher in status than the other, as they take the side of the higher-status disputant (Black 1998:126). [p.700]… But note that these campaigns for support do not necessarily emanate from the lowest reaches of society – that they are not primarily stocked or led by those who are completely lacking in property, respectability, education, or other forms of social status. Rather, such forms as microaggression complaints and protest demonstrations appear to flourish among the relatively educated and affluent populations of American colleges and universities. The socially down and out are so inferior to third parties that they are unlikely to campaign for their support, just as they are unlikely to receive it. [p.701].

B) Partisanship and Conflict Severity
[This is a long section on how partisanship leads some participants to magnify, exaggerate, or even invent transgressions that never happened]

4) DOMINATION AS DEVIANCE
A third notable feature of microaggression complaints is that the grievances focus on inequality and oppression – especially inequality and oppression based on cultural characteristics such as gender or ethnicity. Conduct is offensive because it perpetuates or increases the domination of some persons and groups by others.

A) Microaggression as Overstratification
According to Black (2011), as noted above, changes in stratification, intimacy, and diversity cause conflict. Microaggression complaints are largely about changes in stratification. They document actions said to increase the level of inequality in a social relationship – actions Black refers to as “overstratification.” Overstratification offenses occur whenever anyone rises above or falls below others in status. [Therefore…] a morality that privileges equality and condemns oppression is most likely to arise precisely in settings that already have relatively high degrees of equality… In modern Western societies, egalitarian ethics have developed alongside actual political and economic equality. As women moved into the workforce in large numbers, became increasingly educated, made inroads into highly paid professions such as law and medicine, and became increasingly prominent in local, state, and national politics, sexism became increasingly deviant. The taboo has grown so strong that making racist statements, even in private, might jeopardize the careers of celebrities or the assets of businessmen (e.g., Fenno, Christensen, and Rainey 2014; Lynch 2013). [p.706-707] [In other words, as progress is made toward a more equal and humane society, it takes a smaller and smaller offense to trigger a high level of outrage. The goalposts shift, allowing participants to maintain a constant level of anger and constant level of perceived victimization.]

B) Microaggression as underdiversity
Microaggression offenses also tend to involve what Black calls “underdiversity” – the rejection of a culture. Large acts of underdiversity include things like genocide or political oppression, while smaller acts include ethnic jokes or insults. The publicizers of microaggressions are concerned with the latter, as well as more subtle, perhaps inadvertent, cultural slights…. Just as overstratification conflict varies inversely with stratification, underdiversity conflict varies directly with diversity (Black 2011:139). Attempts to increase stratification, we saw, are more deviant where stratification is at a minimum; likewise, attempts to decrease diversity are more deviant where diversity is at a maximum. In modern Western societies, an ethic of cultural tolerance – and often incompatibly, intolerance of intolerance – has developed in tandem with increasing diversity. Since microaggression offenses normally involve overstratification and underdiversity, intense concern about such offenses occurs at the intersection of the social conditions conducive to the seriousness of each. It is in egalitarian and diverse settings – such as at modern American universities – that equality and diversity are most valued, and it is in these settings that perceived offenses against these values are most deviant. [p.707]. [Again, the paradox: places that make the most progress toward equality and diversity can expect to have the “lowest bar” for what counts as an offense against equality and inclusivity. Some colleges have lowered the bar so far that an innocent question, motivated by curiosity, such as “where are you from” is now branded as an act of aggression.]

C) Victimhood as Virtue
When the victims publicize microaggressions they call attention to what they see as the deviant behavior of the offenders. In doing so they also call attention to their own victimization. Indeed, many ways of attracting the attention and sympathy of third parties emphasize or exacerbate the low status of the aggrieved. People portray themselves as oppressed by the powerful – as damaged, disadvantaged, and needy. [They describe such practices going back to ancient Rome and India] … But why emphasize one’s victimization? Certainly the distinction between offender and victim always has moral significance, lowering the offender’s moral status. In the settings such as those that generate microaggression catalogs, though, where offenders are oppressors and victims are the oppressed, it also raises the moral status of the victims. This only increases the incentive to publicize grievances, and it means aggrieved parties are especially likely to highlight their identity as victims, emphasizing their own suffering and innocence. Their adversaries are privileged and blameworthy, but they themselves are pitiable and blameless. [p.707-708] [This is the great tragedy: the culture of victimization rewards people for taking on a personal identity as one who is damaged, weak, and aggrieved. This is a recipe for failure — and constant litigation — after students graduate from college and attempt to enter the workforce]

5) THE SOCIAL STRUCTURE OF MICROAGGRESSION
In sum, microaggression catalogs are a form of social control in which the aggrieved collect and publicize accounts of intercollective offenses, making the case that relatively minor slights are part of a larger pattern of injustice and that those who suffer them are socially marginalized and deserving of sympathy. [The social conditions that give rise to this form of social control] include a social setting with cultural diversity and relatively high levels of equality, though with the presence of strongly superior third parties such as legal officials and organizational administrators… Under these conditions, individuals are likely to express grievances about oppression, and aggrieved individuals are likely to depend on the aid of third parties, to cast a wide net in their attempt to find supporters, and to campaign for support by emphasizing their own need against a bullying adversary. [p.710]

Several social trends encourage the growth of these forms of social control, particularly in the United States. Since the rights movements of the 1960s and 1970s, racial, sexual, and other forms of intercollective inequality have declined, resulting in a more egalitarian society in which members are much more sensitive to those inequalities that remain. The last few decades have seen the continued growth of legal and administrative authority, including growth in the size and scope of university administrations and in the salaries of top administrators and the creation of specialized agencies of social control, such as offices whose sole purpose to increase “social justice” by combatting racial, ethnic, or other intercollective offenses (Lukianoff 2012:69–73). Social atomization has increased, undermining the solidary networks that once encouraged confrontational modes of social control and provided individuals with strong partisans, while at the same time modern technology has allowed for mass communication to a virtual sea of weak partisans. This last trend has been especially dramatic during the past decade, with the result that aggrieved individuals can potentially appeal to millions of third parties. [P. 710] …As social media becomes ever more ubiquitous, the ready availability of the court of public opinion may make public disclosure of offenses an increasingly likely course of action. As advertising one’s victimization becomes an increasingly reliable way to attract attention and support, modern conditions may even lead to the emergence of a new moral culture. [In other words: progress toward greater equality and inclusiveness, combined with the enormous growth of administrators and other “adults” on campus charged with adjudicating complaints about verbal behavior, plus social atomization, multiplied by the power of social media, explains why charges of “microaggression” have emerged so rapidly on some college campuses just in the last few years.]

6) THE EVOLUTION OF MORAL CULTURE
Social scientists have long recognized a distinction between societies with a “culture of honor” and those with a “culture of dignity”…. The moral evolution of modern Western society can be understood as a transition between these two cultures. [p. 711-712]

A) A Culture of Honor
Honor is a kind of status attached to physical bravery and the unwillingness to be dominated by anyone. Honor in this sense is a status that depends on the evaluations of others, and members of honor societies are expected to display their bravery by engaging in violent retaliation against those who offend them (Cooney 1998:108–109; Leung and Cohen 2011). Accordingly, those who engage in such violence often say that the opinions of others left them no choice at all…. In honor cultures, it is one’s reputation that makes one honorable or not, and one must respond aggressively to insults, aggressions, and challenges or lose honor. Not to fight back is itself a kind of moral failing, such that “in honor cultures, people are shunned or criticized not for exacting vengeance but for failing to do so” (Cooney 1998:110). Honorable people must guard their reputations, so they are highly sensitive to insult, often responding aggressively to what might seem to outsiders as minor slights (Cohen et al. 1996; Cooney 1998:115–119; Leung and Cohen 2011)… Cultures of honor tend to arise in places where legal authority is weak or nonexistent and where a reputation for toughness is perhaps the only effective deterrent against predation or attack (Cooney 1998:122; Leung and Cohen 2011:510). Because of their belief in the value of personal bravery and capability, people socialized into a culture of honor will often shun reliance on law or any other authority even when it is available, refusing to lower their standing by depending on another to handle their affairs (Cooney 1998:122–129). But historically, as state authority has expanded and reliance on the law has increased, honor culture has given way to something else: a culture of dignity. [p. 712-713]

B) A Culture of Dignity
The prevailing culture in the modern West is one whose moral code is nearly the exact opposite of that of an honor culture. Rather than honor, a status based primarily on public opinion, people are said to have dignity, a kind of inherent worth that cannot be alienated by others (Berger 1970; see also Leung and Cohen 2011). Dignity exists independently of what others think, so a culture of dignity is one in which public reputation is less important. Insults might provoke offense, but they no longer have the same importance as a way of establishing or destroying a reputation for bravery. It is even commendable to have “thick skin” that allows one to shrug off slights and even serious insults, and in a dignity-based society parents might teach children some version of “sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me” – an idea that would be alien in a culture of honor (Leung and Cohen 2011:509). People are to avoid insulting others, too, whether intentionally or not, and in general an ethic of self-restraint prevails.

When intolerable conflicts do arise, dignity cultures prescribe direct but non-violent actions, such as negotiated compromise geared toward solving the problem (Aslani et al. 2012). Failing this, or if the offense is sufficiently severe, people are to go to the police or appeal to the courts. Unlike the honorable, the dignified approve of appeals to third parties and condemn those who “take the law into their own hands.” For offenses like theft, assault, or breach of contract, people in a dignity culture will use law without shame. But in keeping with their ethic of restraint and toleration, it is not necessarily their first resort, and they might condemn many uses of the authorities as frivolous. People might even be expected to tolerate serious but accidental personal injuries…. The ideal in dignity cultures is thus to use the courts as quickly, quietly, and rarely as possible. The growth of law, order, and commerce in the modern world facilitated the rise of the culture of dignity, which largely supplanted the culture of honor among the middle and upper classes of the West…. But the rise of microaggression complaints suggests a new direction in the evolution of moral culture.

C) A Culture of Victimhood
Microaggression complaints have characteristics that put them at odds with both honor and dignity cultures. Honorable people are sensitive to insult, and so they would understand that microaggressions, even if unintentional, are severe offenses that demand a serious response. But honor cultures value unilateral aggression and disparage appeals for help. Public complaints that advertise or even exaggerate one’s own victimization and need for sympathy would be anathema to a person of honor – tantamount to showing that one had no honor at all. Members of a dignity culture, on the other hand, would see no shame in appealing to third parties, but they would not approve of such appeals for minor and merely verbal offenses. Instead they would likely counsel either confronting the offender directly to discuss the issue, or better yet, ignoring the remarks altogether.[p.714-715]

A culture of victimhood is one characterized by concern with status and sensitivity to slight combined with a heavy reliance on third parties. People are intolerant of insults, even if unintentional, and react by bringing them to the attention of authorities or to the public at large. Domination is the main form of deviance, and victimization a way of attracting sympathy, so rather than emphasize either their strength or inner worth, the aggrieved emphasize their oppression and social marginalization. … Under such conditions complaint to third parties has supplanted both toleration and negotiation. People increasingly demand help from others, and advertise their oppression as evidence that they deserve respect and assistance. Thus we might call this moral culture a culture of victimhood because the moral status of the victim, at its nadir in honor cultures, has risen to new heights.[p.715]

The culture of victimhood is currently most entrenched on college campuses, where microaggression complaints are most prevalent. Other ways of campaigning for support from third parties and emphasizing one’s own oppression – from protest demonstrations to the invented victimization of hate-crime hoaxes – are prevalent in this setting as well. That victimhood culture is so evident among campus activists might lead the reader to believe this is entirely a phenomenon of the political left, and indeed, the narrative of oppression and victimization is especially congenial to the leftist worldview (Haidt 2012:296; Kling 2013; Smith 2003:82). But insofar as they share a social environment, the same conditions that lead the aggrieved to use a tactic against their adversaries encourage their adversaries to use that tactic as well. For instance, hate crime hoaxes do not all come from the left. [gives examples] … Naturally, whenever victimhood (or honor, or anything else) confers status, all sorts of people will want to claim it. As clinical psychologist David J. Ley notes, the response of those labeled as oppressors is frequently to “assert that they are a victim as well.” Thus, “men criticized as sexist for challenging radical feminism defend themselves as victims of reverse sexism, [and] people criticized as being unsympathetic proclaim their own history of victimization.”[p.715] [In this way, victimhood culture causes a downward spiral of competitive victimhood. Young people on the left and the right get sucked into its vortex of grievance. We can expect political polarization to get steadily worse in the coming decades as this moral culture of victimhood spreads]

7) CONCLUSIONS
The emerging victimhood culture appears to share [dignity culture’s] disdain for risk, but it does condone calling attention to oneself [as in an honor culture] as long as one is calling attention to one’s own hardships – to weaknesses rather than strengths and to exploitation rather than exploits. For example, students writing personal statements as part of their applications for colleges and graduate schools often write not of their academic achievements but instead – with the encouragement of the universities – about overcoming adversity such as a parent’s job loss or having to shop at thrift stores (Lieber 2014). And in a setting where people increasingly eschew toleration and publicly air complaints to compel official action, personal discomfort looms large in official policy. For example, consider recent calls for “trigger warnings” in college classes or on course syllabuses to forewarn students they are about to exposed to topics that cause them distress… [This is a clear link between microaggressions and trigger warnings — both make sense in a moral culture of victimhood]

What we are seeing in these controversies is the clash between dignity and victimhood, much as in earlier times there was a clash between honor and dignity…. At universities and many other environments within modern America and, increasingly, other Western nations, the clash between dignity and victimhood engenders a similar kind of moral confusion: One person’s standard provokes another’s grievance, acts of social control themselves are treated as deviant, and unintentional offenses abound. And the conflict will continue. As it does each side will make its case, attracting supporters and winning or losing various battles. But remember that the moral concepts each side invokes are not free-floating ideas; they are reflections of social organization. Microaggression complaints and other specimens of victimhood occur in atomized and diverse settings that are fairly egalitarian except for the presence of strong and stable authority. In these settings behaviors that jeopardize equality or demean minority cultures are rare and those that occur mostly minor, but in this context even minor offenses – or perceived offenses – cause much anguish. And while the authorities and others might be sympathetic, their support is not automatic. Add to this mix modern communication technologies that make it easy to publicize grievances, and the result, as we have seen, is the rise of a victimhood culture.[p.718]

[For more on the subject of microaggressions, trigger warnings, and the new “vindictive protectiveness” on college campuses, please see resources on this page.]

137 Comments

This phenomenon should be further analyzed in terms of the opportunity to pursue and enjoy a modern form of lynching. That’s what most of these ‘microagression’ complaints are aimed at: an opportunity for an intensely self-righteous, instantly-assembled mob to enjoy destroying ecstatically together an almost arbitrarily selected victim.

Let’s not forget that the real victims of inappropriate conduct here, call it aggression or micro-aggression or whatever you like, include well-connected academics employed in institutions like NYU. It is hard to see what role mockery of a department chairman has to play in an academic environment, where professors as well as students need peace and quiet to do their work. This has been recognized by the law right here in New York, and anyone at NYU who tried complaining about it would make a fool of himself. See the documentation of America’s leading criminal “satire” case at:

I think the use of social media to ridicule perceived “micro-agressors” is akin to a “modern day lynching,” but I wouldn’t go so far as to say they’re equivalent, because you don’t die from being ridiculed. You are right to point out that both phenomena involve a mob “destroying ecstatically together,” but destroying a reputation is not the same thing as destroying a life. But I agree with you that that mob mentality is not a good thing.

Destroying a reputation is a lot like destroying a life. Your reputation is the most valuable thing you own, without which you cannot do many things necessary to living well. It can destroy your employment prospects, romantic prospects, cost you your social life, etc.

The loss of employment prospects, romantic prospects, social life et cetera are all based on the actions of other people and are generally temporary. A person may mitigate them via re-invention. The dead, however, stay that way and this is regardless of whether or not other people treat them as dead. Also, I have yet to met a person who has re-invented themselves back into the world of the living.

Max is exactly right. I (now) have an ex-wife who is the embodiment of what I just read. She is a constant victim, who seeks support from ‘cheerleaders’ who are close to her, and will stand behind her, which she narcissistic-ally translates as her ‘being right’. She attempts to recreate history, by spreading exaggerated, or false stories to any who will listen, and if she can get those rumors spread, she is in fact, creating a history where she is vindicated. She has approached co-workers, friends and random acquaintances of mine to ‘tell them about me…’ I can’t believe it took me so long to find this article!! Amazing view into the mind of the Micro-aggressive persons. Excellently done!!!

Mike’s response to Max is a perfect example of “competitive victimhood” mentioned in the article. (It seems there is a limit to the number of nested responses available, otherwise I would have replied to him directly.)

Then how about this…
Modern Day Maenads: an intensely self-righteous, instantly self-assembling, digital mob that enjoys ecstatically ripping apart an almost arbitrarily selected victim. (Then again, Maenads were female, so that may be a micro aggression.)

Perhaps you’re thinking of the Furies/Erinyes? Aeschylus’ Oresteia Trilogy actually depicts the Furies being supplanted by a fledging court system – a mythological representation of the shift from an Honor to a Dignity society. (The Maenads were followers of Dionysis.) It’s a great comparison!

Absolutely right. We evolved as hunter-gatherers. We satisfy our primal need for gathering with activities such as shopping. We have an equal affinity to hunting, but how do we satisfy it? Actual hunting or blood sports may be impractical, and in many places are opposed by “right-thinking” people. Thus, the only socially acceptable quarry is human! Of course, we do not believe in capital punishment, so we do not actually kill our target, the microaggressor; but our purpose is explicitly to cause social or professional death. And we tend to hunt in packs.

Also, you do not need to belong to the supposed victim group in order to accuse someone of microaggression. In warfare there is the idea of a “proxy war”, in which two powers support different sides in a foreign war. Bringing down a microaggressor is more like a “reverse proxy war”, in which the accuser pretends to fight for a group of victims, against a person who represents (but may not even belong to) their oppressor group.

In order to create viable propaganda, the victim group must be seen as morally pure. This is why their vices are either unreported, or are considered (with or without justification) to be a natural reaction to their oppression.

It would also be fruitful to examine whether the subjects students are studying correlates with their enthusiasm for this kind of activism. My hypothesis would be that students are far more likely to sign on to this kind of social status-seeking hysteria when they begin to realize that their choice of major has placed them on the express escalator towards downward social mobility.

As the horrible realization forms that today’s economy has little need for (and places a correspondingly low value on) certain majors, students desperately cast about for some means to justify their existence and bolster their social status and self-esteem. Social activist enthusiasms, especially when in the immediate local area and are producible from any ‘microaggression’ that comes to hand, offer an almost effortlessly convenient solution.

I’m a bit confused. Israel’s recent bombing of Gazan military targets, in which they conducted an unprecedented and astoundingly successful campaign to avoid civilian casualties in a dense urban area, resulted in an enormous worldwide outcry. I was not alive in the ’30s or ’60s, but was there a worldwide outcry over Jews emigrating to the British Palestine Mandate in the ’30s?

Moreover, what society are you referring to in which equality and diversity are decreasing? The world as a whole? That clearly does not fit. Israel? The Arab world? I can’t think of any area that might fit what you describe.

Indeed, the evidence does not support a conclusion that “Since the rights movements of the 1960s and 1970s, racial, sexual, and other forms of intercollective inequality have declined, resulting in a more egalitarian society…” Members may be “much more sensitive to … inequalities “, but inequality is still present. The gap between groups is as large or larger. But I don’t think that has anything to do with the tendency to identify and spotlight microaggressions.

Um. Israel knowingly bombed UN Refugee centers and shelters.. they admitted it and the UN was pissed… bombing hospitals filled with families when the UN had warned in ADVANCE that it was a civilian hideout…. Do you work for the Israeli government? Nice try.

Absolutely false. Please provide a link. Israel NEVER targeted civilians. They are far MORE liberal than the U.S. Wherever Israel bombed populated areas they scattered leaflets, knocked on ceilings with dummy bombs, and made phone calls first to warn civilians to evacuate. The U.S. certainly does not do the same with its drone strikes that kill dozens if not hundreds of civilians each year. Now the U.N. did admit that terrorist missiles were being hidden in its facilities, perhaps that is what you are referring to?

So the chicken here is the growth of bureaucracy in the Universities. Which is the result of the student loan system and unlimited tuition fees? So bring the cold, hard bench and the chalkboard back to school and the problem will go away.

The most convincing hypothesis for what motivates this nonsense on campuses is that it stems from people who are in over their heads–primarily due to race and gender boosterism (the former enshrined in law, the latter owing to 13 years of schooling and an entire popular culture aimed at boosting girls’ self-esteem)–desperately flailing for a way to avoid confronting their intellectual inadequacies. Hence the “safe spaces” that devalue and even disqualify the “privileged” opinions of white males, with the extreme examples rejecting of the idea of empirical truth as a white male construction.

Come on. Race and gender “boosterism”? That’s nonsense. This is a very complex phenomenon which does depend partly on the ways we conceptualize and enact race and gender (a white man can only claim ‘offense’, but not ‘victimization’,), but the idea that only white male students are intellectually adequate to college isn’t “offensive”, as a student might say- it’s stupid and wrong. And being too intimidated to call YOUR nonsense ‘nonsense’ is exactly why people seek out indirect, passive-aggressive ways of expressing their discontent, and claim victimization instead of calling you out for being, on this particular topic, totally off-base.

In my experience, female and minority students enter college very aware of their limitations in training and preparation, and over-confidence (I say this as a sometimes over-confident white guy) is monopolized by white guys who use big words whose implications they don’t fully understand.

“the idea that only white male students are intellectually adequate to college isn’t “offensive”, as a student might say- it’s stupid and wrong”
– Except Chet did not say this. He’s saying the culture of boosterism does not allow individuals in minority groups to accurately reflect on their own shortcomings in the same way individuals in majority groups can. When you’re constantly told your failings are just a result of racism and sexism, you’ll never look inward for a solution.

You are correct that over confidence is more prevalent among White Males in Western society. The difference though is when White Males realize this, they tend to blame themselves or specific faults in the system. Women and minority races tend to blame White Males or the system as a whole.

“An entire popular culture aimed at boosting girl’s self esteem”
Are you kidding me!? The messages women get consistently from popular culture can be boiled down to: “you’re not good enough” and “buy more stuff so you’ll be good enough.”

I’m not a sociologist, but it’s great to see some academics starting to theorize about these trends as they emerge. I’d only caution that, if the authors are themselves part of a ‘culture of dignity’, then as they observe an emerging culture of ‘victimhood’, they may be seeing the new culture through the lens of their own. I don’t think anyone in this emerging set of norms, frameworks, and models for reactivity to speech would describe it as a culture of ‘victimhood’, but would perceive it in more favorable terms, as a culture of ‘equality’ or ’empowerment’ or ‘inclusion’ or ‘protection’ or ‘safety’/emotional safety.

On days I am feeling temperamentally conservative, I’m likely to suspect that the emerging culture, if it becomes widespread, may have unanticipated problems of its own, and even fall short of its ideals. A fairer treatment of its logic, though, might be possible.

Even taking as positive a view of the culture as I can, though, it’s concerning that it seems to separate people into those-who-harm, those-who-are-harmed and those-who-protect-from-harm. A victim of a ‘microaggression’, real or perceived, is assumed to be unable to handle it themselves (with a retort or a shrug or a magnanimous correction) and to require the intervention of some authority figure. That authority figure- bureaucratic, enlightened, empowered- is assumed to have the perspective, probity, impartiality and political correctness to resolve the conflict fairly, to sanction the offender and restore power to the offended. That may be my own misunderstanding of the internal dynamics at play, but it’s a particular redistribution of power that could prove problematic..

Spot on. This topic fascinates and concerns me, but I want to hear both sides of the argument – the wisdom along with the neurosis of it. Historically oppressed and currently bullied people Do need to speak up, else how does change occur and society improve? And yet the article’s noting the downward spiral of ever accelerating victimhood is visible in young people today, and I fear where it is leading. But as you point out, I am an adherent of Dignity culture, and may be defining away the value of this new modality. So far it looks both subjectively valid and objectively terrifying to me.

I am an adjerent of dignity culture as well. The rights movements of 60s and 70s wherein real societal injustices were addressed happened within the confines of dignity culture. What I mean is, the March towards greater Egalitarianism would be more strong and sustainable within a dignity culture in a more and more atomized society such as ours and also, in an age where the overriding motto is ‘Live and Let Live’.
Whereas, the Victimhood/Empowerment culture creates a fixed-pie mentality of self expression and a vicious cycle of ‘Gotcha’ and ‘Up yours’.

Those in favor of Dignity Culture-style reasoned debate aren’t likey to be satisfied by Victim Culture-style emotional rhetoric.

I suspect there’s a deeper reason why Victim Culture has grown in prevalence. If you have a vast number of people offended by a vast number of things, this allows a vast amount of control by “3rd Parties”. The choice of which “gripes” are “sieved” out of that ocean of angst is clearly steered towards reinforcing conflict.

There’s a physiological rush associated with being a Winning Victim, thus an addictive feedback loop forms. Pretty hard to break through that to even ask logical questions.

aHEMagain
* None of that means “Russian’s did it” or “Illuminati:Confirmed”

Your comment was very eloquent and it’s clear that you’re trying to see this from the perspective of those who may not be in positions of power. However, and I’m only speaking from my personal experiences and what I see, there is definitely a self-victimization and self-marginalization angle at play here. Coming from a minority community myself, and being a woman, I see it very often that people from minority communities have accepted themselves as “lesser” or “over-looked”. They may not have actually experienced anything of that sort, but popular rhetoric tells them that, statistically, someone from their racial and socio-economic background is more likely not to succeed, compared to the more elite (which are almost exclusively white males).

This is something that popular media feeds into, and in today’s over-bearing PC culture, such opinions are fuelled and people feel that, even if they haven’t been wronged or had to face anything of the sort themselves, they still need to be outraged at the “way things are” and be up in arms over it. They have convinced themselves that white, rich, males are out to actively oppress them and deliberately take opportunities away from them. When asked for further clarification, they go down the cop-out route of throwing the reasons of colonization and slavery in other’s faces, just to shut them up and seem as though they have the upper hand and have justified their outrage over the state of affairs.

I see this as a start of a very troubling trend, where the oppressed may very well become the oppressors some day, and would gladly take on the role and feel as though it is their time to reign supreme over those that actively kept them down their whole lives.

“I see this as a start of a very troubling trend, where the oppressed may very well become the oppressors some day, and would gladly take on the role and feel as though it is their time to reign supreme over those that actively kept them down their whole lives.”

Friedrich Nietzsche predicted all of this, if I read him correctly. He said that a culture of dignity would inevitably lead to, would in fact ENABLE AND EMPOWER, a culture of victimhood — or as he called it, a culture of “resentment”. (He also blamed Christianity for it all, given its literal worship of an unfairly executed Ultimate Victim.)

I see your point. I am also a woman and a minority. Your caveat, however, is unwarranted because those likely to be successful subscribe to the dignity culture and will overlook perceived grievances or in some cases, as with myself, don’t even have many complaints to begin with. I assume, as often as I can, that people generally don’t intend to offend (whether or not that is true or not). Since businesses need to make profits, they can ill afford to put up with the pettiness of those who rightly or wrongly constantly see themselves as victims. Courts and bureaucracies are far too busy to let these things take over the system.

“Even taking as positive a view of the culture as I can, though, it’s concerning that it seems to separate people into those-who-harm, those-who-are-harmed and those-who-protect-from-harm.”

Not to mention the unspoken assumption that there is no mobility between those categories. Those Who Harm can NEVER become Those Who Are Harmed, and Those Who Are Harmed can NEVER become Those Who Harm… which conveniently excuses a lot of vicious, vindictive, hypocritical, and outright evil behavior on the part of the disadvantaged.

But what about the examining of someone’s background after they commit a crime, particularly with more heinous crimes. It seems to be somehow reassuring when it is discovered that the young man who brutally raped and tortured, was himself severely abused. Most likely I think, because we can’t really understand such deviant behavior springing out of nowhere?

Thank you for articulating this. While the article does seem to be putting its finger on something very important, Honor and Dignity seem respectful, while Victimhood seems judgment laden.

I suspect there has been excesses and misuse of the mechanisms by those who had access to them in all of these moral cultures. One difference now is that everyone has access to these mechanisms.

I also wonder if there were problems during the transition to the new moral culture–excessive dueling? Did they have to develop boundaries for using the mechanisms of each moral culture? Could it be that this is an adverse effect of an evolution toward a more just culture? From slavery to civil rights to employment and housing protections to disparate impact to excessive force to privilege?

There’s a dialectic here. There’s no doubt that we’ve developed a culture of competitive victimhood. At the same time, there are real wrongs and these mechanisms can help create a more moral society. I wouldn’t want to throw out the baby with the bath water.

Also, it seems that each of these evolutions address the failures of the prior culture. What might the next moral culture look like? How might that address these excesses?

I think the key actors in this have to be the authorities/3rd party. They are placed in a difficult spot of being asked to arbitrate increasingly “micro” disputes…

Yet I do not think anyone is inherently equipped to do so. The conflict is often inherently subjective (e.g. what is “appropriate” behavior), and adding a 3rd subjective voice doesn’t really add much clarity. There is no objective truth here that can be arbitrated by an “expert”.

The age of technology has elevated expertise and objective truth to unattainable expectations. We’ve become so good at solving technical problems, that we often fail to recognize that the most difficult issues are “wicked” problems without “correct” answers. In government, we defer political decisions to “Science Advisory Boards”. We premise our political disputes in terms of cost/benefit analyses, scientific disputes about “sustainability”, fetal “viability” etc., while rarely acknowledging that in many/most cases the fundamental disagreement is about subjective tradeoffs, not objective facts.

At some point, our government/authorities have to step away and say “I/we can’t solve this for you. Talk to eachother and figure it out.” But that is not what the populous wants to hear. The most honest political speech ever was probably Jimmy Carter’s “malaise” speech, which basically did just that… and it was political suicide.

But I don’t see an alternative. The authorities have to start pushing these issues back on their communities rather than saying “I can solve this”. As long as 3rd party authorities are seen as the solution (either to help stop the microaggression, to or validate ignoring the offense), there is no way out, as the warring parties simply stop talking to eachother.

This explains one phenomenon I’ve had trouble with of late. I’m a low-level college administrator, and most of the student complains I hear are about trivial slights that upset the students. When I suggest something on the order of, “maybe you should tell Professor Smith that you don’t like it when he says the word ‘plebiscite’,” they act utterly confused. I’m clearly supposed to leap to their rescue (which might happen if the complaint were something of substance and verifiable). This culture of victimhood manifests very oddly. It isn’t even, “a plebiscite killed my brother,” it’s “that’s a word that mildly annoys me and I’d rather live in a world without it.”

Your comment, and watching my facebook feed where people of all political flavors seem to trigger over equally small things, makes me think that the root is closer to things like helicopter parenting and interaction via social media, not politics even if politics is where it expresses itself most obviously. Colleges are the first place where recently-helicopter-parented-kids now have other authorities to turn to. Even at colleges, victimhood whining seems widespread and coming from all political directions. This is where our whole society is going, with politics along for the ride, not in the driver’s seat.

Stole the words right out of my mouth, Stephen! This is definitely a sign of over-sheltered and entitled children becoming adults in a world where they were taught that they are always right and deserve all the best of things, without actually having to do anything to earn that. Helicopter parenting has finally amassed in producing such a generation of people, and I worry for our future deeply as these people grow up and move into positions of power and leadership.

Being from a 3rd-world country where this sort of behaviour is catching on, I’m curious: how is this related to perceived “sexual harassment”? For ages, I’ve heard stories about this from people who lived in the 1st world: barely touching a woman’s shoulder while saying hi, which is ok in my culture, may be considered unacceptable, that sort of thing.

That Atlantic talks about this subject and offers a solution…if only universities were willing to engage it.

“…”cognitive behavioral therapy. With this in mind, here are some steps that might help reverse the tide of bad thinking on campus.

The biggest single step in the right direction does not involve faculty or university administrators, but rather the federal government, which should release universities from their fear of unreasonable investigation and sanctions by the Department of Education. Congress should define peer-on-peer harassment according to the Supreme Court’s definition in the 1999 case Davis v. Monroe County Board of Education. The Davis standard holds that a single comment or thoughtless remark by a student does not equal harassment; harassment requires a pattern of objectively offensive behavior by one student that interferes with another student’s access to education. Establishing the Davis standard would help eliminate universities’ impulse to police their students’ speech so carefully.

Universities themselves should try to raise consciousness about the need to balance freedom of speech with the need to make all students feel welcome. Talking openly about such conflicting but important values is just the sort of challenging exercise that any diverse but tolerant community must learn to do. Restrictive speech codes should be abandoned.

Universities should also officially and strongly discourage trigger warnings. They should endorse the American Association of University Professors’ report on these warnings, which notes, “The presumption that students need to be protected rather than challenged in a classroom is at once infantilizing and anti-intellectual.” Professors should be free to use trigger warnings if they choose to do so, but by explicitly discouraging the practice, universities would help fortify the faculty against student requests for such warnings.

Finally, universities should rethink the skills and values they most want to impart to their incoming students.”

This is not about this entry, but about your own book, because I didn’t see anywhere else to put this after reading the quote at the end of your intro chapter: Are you familiar with Robert Anton Wilson’s quip, “Convictions make convicts”?

I’m having trouble thinking of a way to tell the difference between a culture in which the moral code is actually changing and a culture in which individuals have a greater ability to broadcast their complaints. If you took a culture of dignity and lowered the barriers to entry for third party appeals – social media makes “appealing to a third party” experientially almost identical to “gossiping with my friends” – wouldn’t you get patterns similar to what this paper describes? Mix in a few interest groups incentivized to pick up and amplify complaints which would otherwise get lost in the hubbub, add a bunch of administrators without any more important responsibilities, and you have modern university culture – still a culture of dignity, but with some noisier parts.

I’m wondering what the objective evidence for an actual shift in the cultural moral code would look like.

This kind of work is what prompted me to become a sociology major, before cynically deciding it was a path toward downward social mobility. It’s telling that the only reason I stumbled upon the blog post is because Marginal Revolution linked to it. I can only applaud the spirit of your question about what objective evidence for an actual shift in the cultural moral code would look like. But let’s be honest, nobody reads sociology papers because of the discipline’s dry focus on grounding itself in empirical data that usually fails to convince but invariably succeeds in putting those outside of the field to sleep. Yes, the author’s grand narrative of a moral code shift does cause my empiricist knee to jerk…but at least we are talking about work in Sociology for a change!

Interesting — one of the notable things about these movements is their *lack* of empirical grounding. (e.g. they will cherry pick racial groups in prisons as evidence of racism, or a gender wage gap as evidence of sexism, but they will flatly reject any biological or empirical piece of evidence to the contrary suggesting it might not be race or genitalia that causes the phenomenon).

Are you suggesting that the sociology activists aren’t even good in their chosen field of study? (As an outside observer, that would be my observation…)

Interesting. I am not a sociologist and I am always happy when I find something Jonathan Haidt writes. He is brilliant and that’s not just my opinion. “He was named one of the “top global thinkers” by Foreign Policy magazine,[3] and one of the “top world thinkers” by Prospect magazine.[4]” based on Wiki. His book, The Happiness Hypothesis is full of hidden gems.

I think you misunderstood dignity culture. The shift to dignity culture from honor culture decreased sensitivity to slights which were once considered grave insults to one’s honor in the previous culture. It created a sense of self-worth, thick skin mentality wherein one was encouraged to ignore, sort the matter with direct non violent confrontation and only then, seek redress with third parties.
So, if you were to re-sensitize yourself to everyday slights (a throw back to honor culture), but keep with the risk averseness of seeking redress via third parties while at the same time draw your self worth from as a fighter and survivor of real or perceived discrimination, a kind of hybrid between honor and dignity culture emerges. Moreover, one is made to think that the THERE IS NO CHOICE BUT TO, signal his/her victim status and call for the public vilification of the culprit by third parties, FOR THAT IS THE ONLY WAY JUSTICE WILL EVER BE SERVED in his/her case and cases of self-identitying group.
A textbook example: Google ‘Sarah Proudman’

I wonder if this so-called hybridization that is occurring could point to these cultures being a part of a cycle of sorts. Perhaps this is a transitory period between the return to Honor culture from the Dignity culture, for example? This might even be quite an attractive notion to some, given the economic insolvency we’re seeing in so many formerly powerful countries right now.

Check out this story in today’s NYT: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/20/nyregion/white-only-signs-in-art-project-at-suny-buffalo-draw-concern.html
After seeing a “whites only” sign [an art project from a Black student], some students say they feel “unsafe.” 20 years ago, students would have been angry. Now they have a vocabulary of weakness — they have learned to offer their own feelings of vulnerability as an argument against someone else’s action. Granted this is not proof, but it is also not just a sign of greater ability to broadcast complaints.

With all due respect, this arguably misconstrues the nature of what is being said. Students, like faculty members, are well aware that legal regulations are designed to protect society from people who threaten it, including those who (to quote the prosecutor in a leading criminal case here in New York) pose a “menace” to academic society by “twisting words” and “stirring up controversy.” See the direct quotation from the prosecutor at:

That important, and revealing, statement of the law, I remind you, was made at a criminal trial involving inappropriately deadpan, and hence micro-aggressive, Gmail “parodies” of an NYU department chairman, and I have not seen a single NYU faculty member condemning (or even discussing) the result in that case. Does this mean that NYU faculty members are cowards? Of course not. It means they basically agree with that statement of the law, and are thus content to allow it to stand without comment. But, if the prosecutors had evoked “anger” of a victim rather than the serious menace to academic society posed by the “parodist,” would the result have been the same? And yes, I use the word “victim,” because there are indeed victims when micro-aggressive conduct occurs, who should always be careful not to display anger, and who should never be afraid to call in the proper authorities to have them deal with the intimidating conduct.

I’ve noticed the same shift, although I’ve mulled it over instead of coming up with anything remotely scholarly. Consider this hunch:

The concept of “heroism” used to mean achieving great victories. Heroes were distinct from martyrs, who achieved fame because they suffered greatly without either betraying their beliefs or losing their inner dignity. Both were honoured, but both were honored in different ways.

The crucial difference: martyrs were honored as “people apart.” Heroes were honoured as role models. Back then, a boy who aspired to be Ulysses would be encouraged; a boy who wanted to be another (say) St. Thomas More would be given a gentle talking-to. The same difference in treatment was accorded to a Jewish lad who wanted to be King David vis-a-vis. a Jewish boy who aspired to be one of the doughty Jewish fighters who committed suicide rather than surrender to the Romans.

Enter the charnel houses of the twentieth century. Thanks not only to the Holocaust but also the Gulag, survivors like Victor Frankl and Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn were seen not just as martyrs but also as heroes. Due to the mass horrors and almost unimaginable sufferings caused by totalitarianism, for the first time in (known) history a martyr was someone to aspire to. If I thirsted to become another Solzhenitsyn, or if Sarah aspired to be another Anne Frank, we would not be given that gentle talking-to; our ambition would either be not discouraged or be mildly validated.

Yes: for the first time in history, a whole crop of youths – including me to a large extent – saw martyrs as role models, as examples to be lived up to. Gone was the admiration-at-a-distance laced with tragedy. Due to a more-or-less healthy reaction to the last century’s charnel houses, a martyr was an honest-to-gosh hero. “Never again!”

Once that new standard was set, it was only a matter of time before popular culture and popular sentiment settled on “survivor” as hero. The seventeenth-century English lad dreamed of being another Sir Francis Drake and honored noble privateers. The nineteenth-century liberal dreamed of being another Dr. Stockmann had hoped that he too would have the social courage to stand up to and tell off an ignorant mob. And us? Many of us dream of being another Bruno Bettelheim: to undergo almost unimaginable persecution and live to tell the tale – in the same way that the seventeenth-century lad dreamed of being another Sir Francis and entering the history books as an intrepid swashbuckler of the sea.

And – perhaps inevitably – the spread-of-heroism occurred. If Victor Frankl was a world hero, then a survivor of Southern segregation and KKK intimidation was a national hero. And, a rape survivor was a local hero…

And inevitably, seeing as how “survivor” carried a real cachet, there eventually came along the gamesmen and gameswomen. In large part, that’s what we’re seeing now: people who claim the “survivor” mantle either lightly or opportunistically. The very definite goal-post-moving (and scoldy equivocation) with regards to the definition of “rape” shows this plainly.

Take it from me: someone who actually has suffered greatly becomes inured to it. This inurement has two earmarks: psychological fatalism and a deep inhibition against complaining. A real survivor quite literally cannot complain: it takes a real effort and sounds hollow to the survivor as (s)he tries. That’s one of the reasons why old-style social activists billed themselves as “the voice of the voiceless.” Someone who really suffered really is voiceless, except for a recounting that’s essentially descriptive. This psychological detachment comes from the necessary repression needed to get through great and prolonged suffering.

Maybe the culture will return to the old norms some day, long after the last of the survivors of totalitarianism’s mega-horrors have been laid to rest in their honoured graves. But until then, we’ve got what we’ve got.

This is hardly the first time in history that martyrdom has been sanctified. The history of the semitic religious culture (judaism, christianity and islam) is rife with it, as is the history of hindu and buddist religious culture.

Also, there are no “old norms.” I’m surprised that you even go there, after acknowledging and validating a theory that posits an evolution of norms.

“a real survivor quite literally cannot complain” This is not true in “victimhood culture” at all. Complaining is demanded in victimhood culture. You are viewing this from the lens of the cultural construct from which you operate.

“Mrs. Collins, you must send a servant with them. You know I always speak my mind, and I cannot bear the idea of two young women travelling post by themselves. It is highly improper. You must contrive to send somebody.”

As some might have guessed, I posted my earlier comment before reading the summary. Now that I have, I’d like to draw everyone’s attention to a 1993 book that contains two chapters that were profoundly ahead of their time.

As the title indicates, it was one of those sophisticated but doomy-gloomy investment books that hit the bookstores in the late 1980s and early 1990s. As such, most of it is dated. But these two chapters are indeed ahead of their time:

Chapter 9: “Muhammed Replaces Marx”.

Chapter 10: “Drugs, Delusions And The Imperial Culture Of The Slums”.

It’s the latter chapter that’s relevant to the “victimhood culture.” With it in mind, I present the gloomy opinion that the “victimhood culture” is actually a transition to a newfound culture of honour. There’s already a genuine culture of honour in the ‘Hood…

I definitely did not expect to see a reference to The Great Reckoning today! The two chapters you mention are very good, but I found the whole framework of “megapolitics” (basically, societies form an equilibrium around the distribution of the ability to use violence to achieve aims) fairly convincing.

And the authors were spot-on with their assessment that Islam would come to dominate world headlines, precisely because Islam has no central authority which one could co-opt in order to stop it from being violent.

The possibly parallel explanation that I tend to adopt is that honour culture happens when the right-wing gain too much control over culture and language, victim culture happens when the left-wing do.
We need to head back to the centre a bit!

If you look at just the fact that micro-aggressions are a victim mindset, characterized by an external locus of control (someone else has to fix the problem because the victim has no power to do so), the literature is clear. An external locus of control is correlated to less favorable outcomes in physical, mental, and behavioral healthy, relationships, and career success.

This is due, at least in part, to the fact that it is a more stressful mindset than an internal locus of control. Stress has a negative impact on immune, digestive, cognitive and central nervous system functions. Chronic stress is linked to premature births, adverse epigenetic changes, chronic diseases, earlier mortality, higher levels of mental illnesses including depression, anxiety, and more.

I would encourage anyone who has an external locus of control to work toward developing a more empowered mindset.

At a glance, note the hypothesis regarding the emergence of “dignity culture,” which is notable for its conspicuous disagreement with reality: they’re positing the emergence of ‘dignity culture’ during a time of conspicuous inequality, in precisely the most unequal parts of the society. This is pure academistic contrarianism, engineered to provoke a response and elevate the authors by putting them into a ‘victim’ status where it will be taboo to attack them.

Perhaps income inequality overall has somewhat increased, but other and more important types of inequality have decreased dramatically. In other words, more women go to college then men, women and minorities in general are encouraged to go to college and “underrepresented minorities” (poor Asians) and women are favored for employment and in admissions. Anyone can go anywhere, live anywhere, participate in anything they want. Even more true in the case of gay/transgender.

At least in this society, as long as their have been public bathrooms, it has been generally acknowledged that any one person only had the right to use half of them, that the person did not have their own choice to decide which half they would use, and that failure to limit yourself to the correct half would be regulated with the force of law.

For a significant proportion of the population to believe that they had either the option to personally choose which half of the bathrooms they would use, or in some cases even have a right to all of them, is a very new “freedom” that no one had previously experienced.

Humanity has failed to legally define what constitutes verbal abuse. The new generation is defining it for themselves on an individual basis. The discussion that needs to be continued (begun in the 1806 by John Stuart Mill in his treatise On Liberty) revolves around defining offense and harm and defining the point that the right of free speech violates the right to freedom from harm.

You can either work with People or Things.
Things are much easier to work with; a little skill, training and practice makes you the absolute master of the Things in your life; your car, home, computer, phone. They will never argue with you, never laugh at you, look their nose at you.
People, on the other hand are complex, difficult and unpredictable.
We now have several generations who are not used to dealing with people directly but with their projected words, thoughts and personalities; texts, twitter, E-mail, is the most common venue for interacting with others.
We can’t smell them, feel their physical presence; can’t be impressed or disappointed or intimidated by them.

The article explains quite a bit about a small controversy for people like me who attended JEB Stuart HS is Falls Church, VA. Ostensibly those promoting the change, as certain classmates from my days at the school are throwing their social status into the “pro-name change” group. I’m encouraged to know that people are doing the research that explains such behavior.

Interesting that many popular movies still live in honor culture. There is a definite hero who does not look for help from institutions. Some movies and a lot of TV reflect dignity culture in that the bad guy gets taken away in cuffs. Are superhero movies about victim culture, with the heroes standing in for the state?

Do you think that a positive moral status for victimhood implies that the “liberty/oppression” foundation has gained value/prominence in our culture more broadly? It might appear so, based on the popularity of painting opponents as oppressors portrayed here.

Or, is it just that, at other times and places, oppression is seen as an inevitable part of the way the world works, but in the artificial microenvironment of the modern (liberal) American university, tolerance for it is so much smaller that it rises in importance?

Of course, the appeal of the oppression narrative is not limited to the political left. Witness the way Kim Davis (the Kentucky clerk who briefly went to jail for disobeying court orders to issue marriage licenses to same sex couples) has been lauded by those on the socially conservative right who see oppression of Christians all around them.

This reads like standard critiques of liberalism from Edmund Burke to Thomas Sowell. The “culture of victimhood” is just a modern retelling of the liberal grand narrative of oppression of the weak by the powerful, and entitlement as compensation for injustice, that’s existed for more than two centuries. The tools and techniques used by that culture to work toward its ends have evolved along with society but other than that, and the fact that the paper Haidt summarizes comes from the liberal Tribal Moral Community of academic social science, there’s little about it that’s “beginning” or “new:” WEIRD, narrow, single-minded focus on injustice and oppression, i.e., the liberal grand narrative and Social Justice Warriors. Check. Dependence on third parties, i.e., the government, to solve all problems. Check. Moral and financial dependence and the atrophy of self-reliance. Check. Campaigning for support, i.e., community organizing, i.e., “occupying”. Check. Dominance as deviance,. i.e., the one percent and hands up don’t shoot. Check. Social structure with ever increasing sensitivity to ever decreasing problems, i.e., the Overton window and/or the slippery slope of the entitlement mentality. Check. The evolution of moral culture from honor and dignity to victimhood, i.e., the conservative grand narrative about liberalism. Check. Entitlement mentality? Identity politics? Culture of grievance? Do these phrases ring any bells?

A commenter above named Doichin Cholakov observed “There is an excellent Pascal Bruckner book The Temptation of Innocence – Living in the Age of Entitlement, that traces the phenomenon of the modern fascination with victimhood back to the intellectual and biographical persona of Rousseau. It sort of puts the trend described here in a scary cultural context.“

He’s right.

The mentality, the style of thought, the morality, described in Haidt’s summary has been around since the French Revolution. Back then its tools were the cult of reason and the guillotine, now it uses micro aggressions, trigger warnings, and the legal system. But the thought process behind it and the goals it seeks have been consistent for more than two hundred twenty five years.

Do people really not understand that you get the behaviors you incentivize, or at least don’t discourage? Do they really not see that the instant you start giving special dispensations – positive liberty – to so-called victim groups or historically oppressed or whatever the heck the buzzwords are, that people will naturally and automatically compete for the title of most aggrieved? Are they that blind? How is that even possible? Especially for the self-proclaimed morality of compassion and empathy for the human condition!

Do people really need sociologist to tell them “Where micro aggressions really come from“? Do they really not see that they’re the direct and practically inevitable consequence of the one-foundation morality of “care” and the WEIRD style of thought (also known as the unconstrained vision)? Which is correlated with Rationalism in Politics (the essay by Oakeshott) and with Kindly Inquisitors: The New Attacks on Free Thought (the book by Rauch) ? And also with the rationalist delusion, also known roughly as a type of thinking called Logos?

If so then the problem of the dynamic between left and right as that between flatland and spaceland (*paragraph pasted below from page 182 of The Happiness Hypothesis by Haidt, for convenience) is worse than even I thought it was.

Moral foundations are evolved psychological mechanisms of social perception, intuition, reasoning and awareness. They’re the color receptors of the moral mind. They’re also the tools in the “toolbox” of the social animal that make possible “the greatest miracle” of cooperative society; in this sense they’re also the primary colors of fundamental human nature.

The liberal mind uses half of them, and of those mostly just “care.” The conservative mind uses all of them in equal balance.

For two and a quarter centuries the conversation between liberals and conservatives about social issues has been like a conversation between color blind people and fully sighted people about rainbows, in which the socially color blind liberals think the fully sighted conservatives are immoral and/or dysfunctional because they see moral colors that “everyone knows” just aren’t there. When half the tools of social cognition are external to, and beyond the reach of, one’s awareness as is the case for liberals one is left with no logical alternative but to conclude that people who think differently must be, can only be, afflicted with some sort of mental, social, or psychological discourse. That being the case it’s only natural for one to feel not only justified, but morally bound, to exclude such people and their ideas from “polite” civil discourse.

It also explains the eighteenth century cult of reason and the guillotine, and their twenty-first century counterparts of the culture of victimhood, microaggressions, trigger warnings, and the legal system; the aim of all of which has been, and still is, to deny access to civil discourse, and even to livelihoods, of people who don’t think “correctly.”

This is not to say that conservatives don’t share some of the blame for the current divisiveness. Where liberals fail to realize that “there’s more to morality than care and fairness” (Haidt’s second principle of moral psychology), conservatives often fail to realize that there’s no liberal moral foundation that’s not also a conservative foundation. This adds to the problem.

Look. I get it. To a very large degree the political divide is a natural and inevitable consequence of fundamental human nature. We evolved to form into groups of like-minded people which then compete with other groups for political power. This article in the National Journal which summarizes NYU studies about partisanship shows that this aspect of our nature can take over rule, and ruin, our lives (How Politics Breaks Our Brains, September 14, 2014 http://www.nationaljournal.com/magazine/2014/09/19/how-politics-breaks-our-brains-how-we-can-put-them-back-together ) It’s no accident that the time period of our greatest “togetherness” was around the time of WWII. We all shared a common threat and we put aside our differences to fight it together. But absent that sort of catastrophe some amount of divisiveness is practically inevitable.

But a lot of it is NOT inevitable, and therefore is addressable. A lot of it is because the human animal has a poor understanding of itself. Conservatives and liberals alike both assume things about human nature and each other that are wrong. And we think and act based on those false assumptions.

But within that context, the problem of flatland-spaceland is the elephant in the room that facts and evidence and reason and the scientific process prove is there – and that liberalism exists in denial or ignorance of – that we’re going to have to talk about and address if the human animal is ever going to have any chance at all of fully understanding itself, and through that understanding finding common ground about what really makes us tick, from which our political debates can ensue, and from that common ground possibly answering “Yes” more often to Rodney King’s question, “Can we all get along?”

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*For convenience, here’s the Flatland-Spaceland paragraph from The Happiness Hypothesis. I think Haidt’s findings show that this is a fair characterization of the dynamic between liberalism and conservatism, where one-foundation liberalism is the square flatlander, and all-foundation conservatism is the spherical spacelander:

“One day, the square is visited by a sphere from a three-dimensional world called Spaceland. When a sphere visits Flatland, however, all that is visible to Flatlanders is the part of the sphere that lies in their plain-in other words, a circle. The square is astonished that the circle is able to grow or shrink at will (by rising or sinking into the plane of Flatland) and even to disappear and reappear in a different place (by leaving the plane, and then reentering it). The sphere tries to explain the concept of the third dimension to the two-dimensional square, but the square, though skilled at two-dimensional geometry, doesn’t get it. He cannot understand what it means to have thickness in addition to height and breadth, nor can he understand that the circle came from up above him, where “up” does not mean from the north. The sphere presents analogies and geometrical demonstrations of how to move from one dimension to two, and then from two to three, but the square stilI finds the idea of moving “up” out of the plane of Flatland ridiculous.”

Your statement assumes that everyone that gets help is lazy and unwilling to work, maybe that they never wanted or did work. It also assumes that we are all equally able in all the ways that matter in a super-competitive universe. I argue that we are NOT all equal – that some are super fit in the Darwinian sense and will ultimately dominate others sometimes indirectly and with less obvious, less deliberate cruelty while others go for direct tyranny, unapologetically. I think a more accurate view accounts for real human frailties and differences and self-perceived, perhaps false sense of weakness and naturally, outright malingerers milking the system. I live in a community with tons of poverty next to wealth, very educated able minded people to people who are shockingly dysfunctional and unable to make rational decisions (for any variety of reason). Years ago I suffered an emotional setback that resulted in my getting benefits. Now that I want out, I struggle. The opportunities around me are things that I might have qualified for 10 years ago, but that with the lapse of time, plus my age, (51 in November) mean that I would get passed over for younger, more talented people and people in my cohort with more talent and recent experience. At the beginning of my academic career, I thought I had the bull by the horns. Even at times when things looked like bad, I assumed that somehow, come rain or shine, I would be the victor because of my outlook or attitude. In the last ten years, I have watched news shows, featuring people who, at some point in their lives, saw themselves as able- really all-American. Then, when the crash happened, they not only lost their jobs, but lost everything else. They relate stories of persistent job hunting, extensive experience and even elite background. Still, X years on, no job offers. And yes, the all looked for work well below their previous earnings. They just wanted to work, not at Walmart, but also not at Boeing. At least one man confessed as he was standing in cue for food handouts, that he never imagined that he’d ever stand in a food line, that he looked down on people like that. He’d been top a car salesmen for nearly 30 years. When the crash hit, his employer decided to cut cost with those earning higher salaries. All of the people interviewed were in their 50s – had achieved the American dream and expressed dismay that this could happen to them. They felt victimized by a system in which they had fully participated. I wouldn’t consider myself equal (as work goes) to any of them. If they couldn’t find gainful employment, how can I even imagine competing with them?

It should be noted that the National Parks put those signs up because random tourists feed animals arbitrarily, giving out handouts, often unhealthy, and with no knowledge of actual need. And thus the result is that the food tends to go not to the animals that need it most, but to those who best put themselves in a position to beg.

Whereas there are numerous situations where those same National Parks representatives or their ideological colleagues DO feed animals, or provide for other needs, when circumstances arise where it is obvious that some animal or group of animals needs the help for a period of time.

If you want to be analogous, then the solution is not to remove a social-safety net, but to make it’s application more intelligent and effective.

The “culture of victimhood” seems to characterize the business community as much as anyone else. The Chamber of Commerce and allied organizations publish state comparisons of “business climate,” which is a measure of the scope of legal regulation, based on the assumption that any standards for business humiliate and disempower managers. “Business confidence” is especially fragile. Managers need to know that taxes will not rise or regulations multiply tomorrow. With significant uncertainty about future profit, they may flee to more congenial environments in Hong Kong and China.

Curiously, building business confidence seems to depend frequently upon imposing new uncertainties and “precarity” on the employees.

This “culture of victimhood” sounds very close to what one sees with those diagnosed as “covetous sociopath”. I say this as someone who has an in-law who is diagnosed as such.

She has not been “given her due”; others are depriving her of her rightful level of respect, support, or material rewards. She is easily offended. Others that have succeeded or achieved something have received more than their rightful share and such achievement or success was always, in her mind, unfairly gained – they must have cheated or they were given special treatment of some sort that she was denied. She comes up with reasons why the current laws and social norms should not apply to her. She always argues for special treatment or an exception to the rules justifying it because she was deprived of something in the past.

I’ve said this a million times. You have to view this biologically. This is a real time shift in human psychology and reproductive strategy, from an aggressive, competitive, in-group-oriented, sexually monogamous, high rearing investment psychology, designed to compete for slim pickens in an environment of resource shortage, to a more competition averse, less loyal, more sexually promiscuous, less rearing-concerned culture designed to rapidly expand into a resource glut. Take away birth control and abortion, and make things more like the natural environment where the urges evolved, and all these SJW college girls would be popping out babies sired by playa daddies before their freshman years were over, and that would continue throughout college. It really is human rabbits vs human wolves.

In r-selection competition avoidance is key – if resources are in a glut, fighting is a lot of risk for stuff you’ll also get just the same if you flee and avoid the risk. Once everybody is competition and conflict avoidant, miring others in conflict while you avoid it becomes the sword. You heap disadvantage on your peers, while avoiding it yourself. That is what the victim status claim is – heaping conflict on those around them while avoiding it themselves.

The shift in our culture is a shift from a more K-selected psychology to a more r-selected psychology, and it is being produced by relatively free resource availability and lack of the need to fight to survive.

If the economy collapses back into a Depression, expect things to shift back the other way, and everything which has changed to reverse.

r/K Selection Theory applied to humans is the ultimate answer. Everything else is just inching toward that inevitable conclusion.

I believe that microagression makes sense. However, since humans have interacted with one another, bigotry and hate have existed. Starting the in early 20th century it was the Irish Catholics. Every time a new group of immigrants come in, there is prejudice. In the 1970’s it was the “boat people”, in the 1990’s the “Russians”. It appears to me that every decade has a targeted group. It is pretty sad that some students and others, feel so powerless.

Mr Haidt, if I may suggest an angle for future analysis… I love this framing of this important discussion, and I buy into the idea that Dignity culture is more ‘civilized’ than Honor cultures. Left out of the debate so far, though, is what to do if you are in a Dignity culture, yet your group’s needs are not being addressed. For example: White American straight males are well served by the Dignity culture, black American lesbians not so much. So the question is how the under-respected can gain traction when their ‘dignity’ is not, in fact, being respected. The hypothesis appears to be this newly emerging victimhood culture (better referred to as Call Out culture, imho, where the issue is calling out the bad behavior, as victims appear in every direction we look). It is a disturbing shift for many of us, but the question remains – what else are the left out supposed to do? See Ferguson and black suspects treatment by white cops to understand the problem. We are supposed to treat white officers of the law with respect, while that same ‘Dignity culture’ is relentlessly disrespecting black men to the point of executing them in the streets without cause. I like Dignity culture, and wish to preserve it – but only if it serves everyone. Until that time arrives, bring on the angry drag queens, impoverished people of color, sexually abused women, and all the otherwise disrespected, as their lives deserve equal dignity too. Until everyone is inside the bubble of respect, the disenfranchised will experience the system’s push for increased ‘dignity’ for those already in power as a malevolent farce robbing them of their supposedly equal birthrights in a free society.

I think the term “victimhood culture” is really just Boomer-splaining why all these damned kids won’t get off their lawns and let them go back to the good ol’ days when everyone knew their place in society.

I mean, come on… “honor” and “dignity” vs “victimhood”? Talk about framing… it’s clear that these sociologists are working really hard to slam back at their perception of political correctness taking over, right?

Aren’t they conveniently ignoring that under “honor” and “dignity” cultures, people of certain races, genders, classes, etc were marginalized, oppressed, enslaved, etc?

The examples in the Atlantic recently have been dramatic and story-worthy, but do they represent an overall cultural shift towards victimhood, or is there also another part of our culture that’s also equally strong?

There is a culture of spite that exists too. People are doing nasty shit just for the sake of being cruel – from trolling around saying awful things to committing hate crimes to domestic violence to workplaces, abuse happens in a lot of forms.

With silly stories like the soccer one from Instagram, there’s not an abuser. It’s an example of 2 people playing the victim at each other. Sure, I get that.

But to expand that out and pretend that it represented “honor” and “dignity” to settle a dispute on your own without law… rather ignores the people at the losing end of a dispute, doesn’t it? What does that mean for the people who are beaten by cops? How do they maintain honor and dignity, by resorting to retaliatory violence?

I’m not trying to be overly dramatic, just trying to take these thoughts to their logical conclusions to expose the fallacies of the frameworks presented by the author without taking the time to write an essay in response.

I think overall we’re a lot more self-aware and empathetic than ever before. A lot of us who pay attention to things are overwhelmed by all the compassion that’s required.

Some people react by trolling or abusing.

Some people react by becoming uber-victims (not misclassified employees of the world’s largest illegal cab company, but those who carry the “survivor” identity rather than moving beyond their trauma).

Some people turn off their compassion and anger to become cold-blooded reptilian executives and lobbyists, ignoring the social costs of their actions.

Where does the CEO of Chase Bank fit into the culture of victimhood?

How about Dick Cheney and Donald Trump?

I’m being facetious here – but bringing it back to the Baby Boomers with power. Those guys don’t fit into the framework of a culture of victimhood – it’s too narrow to be any kind of real cultural vantage point. It only carries one perspective – that of a victim.

It diminishes real victims by making it seem as if there are no victims, just those who would, in the words of the study, “rather than emphasize either their strength or inner worth, the aggrieved emphasize their oppression and social marginalization”.

As if when being hit by a cop with a stick, shouting “I’m worth more than this” will help.

A couple of snotty kids at Oberlin make a great punchline to a joke, but they don’t represent the dominant social forces at work in our culture. Neither does “victimhood”.

It’s just one side of the coin.

By framing the good ol’ days as “honor” and “dignity”, the Boomers can fondly remember the days when no one had to pretend to listen to any complaints.

They just told the help to shut up and make ’em a sandwich.

And everyone did what they were told, because the cops would hit them with sticks if they didn’t stay in their place.

Aaron, I feel like you’re both oversimplifying this well researched, scholarly article to invalidate it, while also missing some key points. The article summarized here is not an argument for or against any of the different cultures presented, it’s merely a scientific observation of a hypothesized culture in the early stages of EMERGING. Also, it primarily deals with college campus culture, not really the country at large. Even so, it’s made very clear that inequality does need to exist on some level in order for this hypothesized culture to develope. It should also be noted that police brutality is far and away from the type of offenses being examined and evaluated here, offenses that many would perceive as insignificant. Now that I feel like I’ve basically restated a number of key points stated in the summary above, I’m starting to feel as thought your response doesn’t address anything actually stated in the summary other than the rather sensational Oberlin debacle. Instead you attempt to discredit an entire paper by reducing it to another new obnoxious “splaining” term, and then proceed to offer an unrelated personal take on… stuff with some reflections on honor and dignity thrown in for good measure. It’s a little troubling to imagine this could have been an entire essay. That being said, your thoughts are well written and you bring up some interesting ideas. What I find frustrating, is an intelligent and respected person trying to sway opinion on something like this without bothering to engage with the ideas being presented. Almost makes me wonder if you even read it.

I worked as a graduate assistant in the 90’s and I saw the emergence of the culture of entitlement. I think it gets blended with victimization when college students expect things to come easy – as many American parents and school systems (K-12) dole out stars and smiley faces for the least amount of effort, but also over-protecting children from criticism and preventing almost every from of discipline, including firm verbal reprimand. So, it’s not just minorities and women, but young people in general, carrying this attitude around. I made the HUGE mistake of telling middle class white kids that because they are middle-class and white, they should know how to compose a paragraph with a central thesis and follow it through. I learned later that I was a racist for saying that. I actually thought was elevating them – that their background gave them better educational foundations – and that they were failing to draw upon those at the college level. In fact, sometimes I just said “middle-class” since I didn’t have any minorities in any of my discussion groups. They made the intellectual link between middleclass and white on their own. I admit, I was bold with them because I expected superior performance from them. Is it burdensome to be white in then, since society expects more of you? Maybe they, in this respect, are victims of white privilege – having to outperform each other, since they are already at the forefront (statistically).

Maybe “dignity culture” can be better understood as a transitional point between “honor culture” and “victimhood culture” than as a separate moral culture of its own. After all, the response t0 major offenses is the same in both “dignity” and “victimhood” cultures: appeal to 3rd party, paint self as injured. So in conditions where there is no 3rd party authority seen as responsive, you get a culture where not needing to bring in a 3rd party is valorized, and in fact dishing out effective personal “justice” gives you something of the status of an authority. In conditions where rule of law exists but is corrupt (such as a judicial system that punishes murder but hands out harsher sentences to black people than white people for minor crimes), you get a culture where appeal to 3rd party authority is seen as a last resort. In conditions where there is some unfairness left (racism, sexism, etc.) but authorities are seen as vulnerable to accusations of being unfair, you get frequent appeals to 3rd party authority on the basis of accusations of unfairness. Which of course begs the question, what will moral culture look like in an entirely just society?

Take the incident of “The Corporate Bus”: in a city full of worker’s rights and environmental activists, advocates for mass transit and electric cars, one that is nonetheless choked by traffic gridlock, a protest movement formed around trying to stop companies from hiring buses to transport their employees to work. Why? Because, in spite of these buses ticking every box on the activists’ list, those benefiting were workers who were perceived to be better off than others in the city.

At around the same time, the employees of the mass transit service, who already earned above the median wage (train drivers can earn 6-figure salaries), demanded a 23% pay raise. They went on an illegal strike when this demand was not met, inconveniencing hundreds of thousands of low-income wage-earners who had no other way to get to work. Rather than vilify this strike, the city caved and provided a generous pay raise, making these the highest paid transit workers in the state.

What’s going on here? Well, the people taking the corporate bus work for technology companies. The news reports are relentlessly positive: IPOs making millionaires, pool tables and pinball at work, free gourmet lunches, etc. These are people who could never claim to be victims, which means that you can do anything to them, say anything about them, without threat of sanction.

The transport employees, on the other hand, are a unionized work force. They find it easy to claim to be victims of callous managers who are mistreating them. Thus, when they hurt the innocent in order to extract a pay raise after already earning well over the median wage, they are shielded by their victim status.

The culture of victimization is here to stay, unfortunately, because victims are rewarded, and everyone sees it. If you are caught doing something ethically dubious, the easiest way to turn the tables is to characterize your victim as an oppressor in a different sphere: “sure, I stole the money, but he was a sexist pig.”

From a superficial perspective (since I’m not a scholar of any kind), this does not seem like a new form of behavior, even if the context is new. Another age when wild accusation (often score-settling, thinly disguised), followed by lynch mobs, formed to extract public confession and apology, often followed by massively disproportionate punishment.

The lesson for most people is to keep your head down, stay quiet, and hope for the best. If you are a member of a class that “can’t” be a victim, you will have a difficult time.

This is missing THE critical point–the proverbial elephant in the corner: The honor culture was a MALE culture. The defense of women fell to men. Even the dignity culture was largely a MALE culture.

I think that by and large, men are still trying to living a dignity culture, but many women still instinctively live as in an honor culture. This worked with a strong patriarchy, but with the rise of the matriarchal society, it’s all falling apart.

In the end, the only solution is for men AND [I think majority of] women to reassert the values of the dignity culture and to disavow the victim culture. We can start by holding self-proclaimed victims accountable. (Make a false rape accusation, you go to jail. Lie in divorce court, go to jail. Abuse your husband, go to jail.)

I think it’s actually a reversion back to honor culture. It’s just that grievance panels are now the weapon of choice, and not dueling pistols.

Any time you leave a weapon around, and sanction it’s use for trivial reasons of personal offense, you risk a reversion to honor culture, because it’s a natural mode of human existence.

I’d note that, given the way certain classes of people are permitted to use these weapons, (Nominal ‘minority’ groups, even when they’re locally the majority.) while other groups are precluded from using them, (White males, mainly.) it’s not just honor culture. It’s honor culture with an aristocracy.

I can see this general theory being used by plutocrats and oligarchs against the 99% classes. Sometimes, there really IS an OBJECTIVE standard to judge class fairness, especially socioeconomic fairness. We (USA) achieved such a standard between 1950-1980; almost entirely a result of moral tax and fiscal policy. For the last 35 years, an immorally imbalanced “crony fascist” taxation system has redistributed profound wealth from the 98% into the 2%. True victims. True perps.

I am confused by this article, and what it claims is the evolution of a culture of victimhood. I think it is ignorant to ignore that there are, in fact, groups of people who are disadvantaged, and do experience prejudice on a minute by minute basis. They are demeaned regularly, and this does contribute to the way they see themselves.

It would be victimhood to use this as an excuse to do nothing. It is not victimhood to admit that this exists. If you have not experienced it, then . . . you haven’t. It is not only nonsense to deny the impacts of institutional sexism and racism, it actually blames the people who experience these issues as wrong for bringing them up.

Should college campuses ignore these social trends? I agree that people should not be coddled. But, um, racism is real and still happening. As a person who is recently disabled and looking for a job, I can tell you that I am experiencing some very real “micro-aggression”. I need to learn to deal with this in my own way, and not expect a “safe space”. But it is fair to expect that if I am a qualified, graduate degreed professional, that I should be able to eventually be promoted in a position, and not just be grateful that I was finally hired and sit in the same position for the next 20 years. You know, I had gifts before the accident, and those gifts are still there. It is frustrating I have to fight just for things that used to be easy to do- like be respected or get a job, but those are the breaks. Don’t tell me that my experience isn’t real though- that is just mean.

“Whenever victimhood (or honor, or anything else) confers status, all sorts of people will want to claim it.”

As they should. Let’s not forget that the victims of inappropriate aggression here include well-connected academics employed in institutions like NYU. After all, mockery and satire are clearly forms of aggression, and are treated as such by the law. See the documentation of America’s leading criminal satire case at:

Keep up the good work Jonathan. Can you please consider linking up with some of the people in the media who’re on our side on this issue?
Might I recommend Joe Rogan and Dave Rubin to start with?

And btw, in response to your tweet that everyone above 35 is disgusted. I’d revise that. Pretty much everyone before this particular group of college kids is disgusted. I’m 27 and nearly everyone I know hates this stuff. There is hope.

With all due respect, Gary, Jonathan doesn’t seem to be listening any more. He has, above all, chosen to ignore, rather than engage with, my comments. Certainly one has to wonder whether any NYU faculty member, including Jonathan, would behave differently than others have in the past when confronted with inappropriate mockery and criticism. Are the fundamental attitudes (or selective silences) of those who oppose the micro-aggression movement not a bit hypocritical?

one sees that although the original victims of the inappropriately deadpan (and hence micro-aggressive) “parodies” were males, of the 19 judges who have, so far, dealt with the case, 15 have been females. The only dissenting opinion, arguing farcically that the micro-aggressive conduct was protected by the so-called “First Amendment,” was written by a male (who, embarrassingly, is the chief judge of the New York Court of Appeals in Albany).

Clearly, the judge who presided over the actual trial, a woman, was much closer to the mark when she explained that “neither good faith nor truth is a defense to any of the crimes charged,” and that the defendant’s “criminal intent … brought you a parody over the line.”

Thus, it can safely be said that Jonathan’s academic colleagues at NYU and elsewhere have a preponderance of distinguished women to thank for making it clear that inappropriate, micro-aggressive mockery of well-connected professors will henceforth be treated as a crime in this great nation.

Naturally, the same principle can, and should, be extended to other forms of micro-aggression. Academic officials in Missouri have made this clear by urging students to call the police whenever they feel they have been victimized by micro-aggression, and hopefully NYU will soon follow suit. It is one thing for distinguished faculty members to consult with their connections and bring in the prosecutors when provocatively offensive speech needs to be silenced; many students might not realize that they too have this right.

I’m going to reframe this statement so that it provides a bit more explanatory power without engaging in the suggestion endemic to empathic experience and value judgement.

Conflict occurs when someone seeks to impose a cost on another person, consisting of :
1) loss of opportunity for experience – paying the cost of lost opportunity;
2) increased demand for discipline – paying the cost of behavioral modification;
3) loss of status or imaginary status – again resulting in opportunity for reward.
4) loss of normative investment
5) loss of material investment
6) loss of offspring, mates, kin, or friends.

All moral justifications for the imposition of cost on others depend upon the actor’s and subject’s perception of the terms of cooperation. In other words, moral arguments do not bother one’s enemies. Only those whom we ether cooperate with or seek opportunities to cooperate with.

We most commonly call demand for the payment of these costs ‘shaming’, and the population we shame the person with ‘rallying’. The purpose of rallying and shaming is to deprive the subject of the cooperation – meaning opportunities for entertainment, friendship, production, or mating. The degree of rallying increases the scope of opportunities the subject will lose.

Why then is rallying and shaming possible to employ as a means of coercion in some circumstances and not others? Well, have you ever heard the adage “academia is petty because the stakes are so low”? It’s not just academia where the stakes are low. In contemporary urban life, the stakes for almost every social relations are low because opportunity costs of association are near zero, and marginal difference in value when opportunity costs are near zero are also near zero. Hence the emphasis on signaling in dress, hobby, and possessions in urban areas.

Rallying, Gossiping and Shaming can be successfully employed where the participants have limited value internally to one another, and externally to non-group members, and because of individual lack of value the only obtainable value members have , is collective action expressed as deprivation of opportunity of others outside the group – ie Boycott.

Therefore:
(a) students compose a revenue source for universities.
(b) students individually have little (if any) value other than as a revenue source.
(c) boycott by students causes externalities – potential loss of future revenue, but also loss of status signaling by the administration, staff, and faculty, all of whom depend upon signaling precisely because of marginal indifference of administration faculty and staff at other than at the extremes.

Furthermore, students are for the first time finding power in collective action and find stimulation for the first (and perhaps last) times in their lives where their collective action is substantial enough to cause a change in the course of events. In other words, power is both unifying and exciting.

Victimhood then is vehicle by the privileged and valueless to obtain stimulation as a consequence of exercising power as a group. It’s another exercise of parental rebellion and an attempt at new stimulation – greater sovereignty – and therefore maturity.

Now, the question why this generation can rely upon rallying and shaming, and the question why the 60’s generation can rely upon rallying and shaming to threaten deprivation of opportunity to collect revenues and to maintain status signal (and to gain signals for some), is one of economics, class and genetics. Conversely why could some other generations not make use of rallying and shaming?

I’m not a terribly big fan of Nietzsche, but this is an example of Will To Power and little else.

We have little public record of some groups – we didn’t notice the German immigrants right – despite that they’re larger in number than the British? The catholics caused the prohibition movement and a good deal of the consequences of the depression, and a weakening of rule of law, but they even built their own schools and universities. But we noticed other groups as silent but beneficial such as Ukrainians in Canada, Hindus in the entrepreneurial sector, and East Asians in technical sectors in America. And we noticed other groups not silent – relying upon their traditional economic, class, and genetic strategies: shaming.

Our genes are pretty effective puppet masters. And for many of us we are not even aware of the strings – despite the fact that nearly all we say and do in every circumstance is at their direction.

Heterogeneity breeds signaling conflict, breeds normative conflict, breeds economic conflict, breeds residential and workplace conflict, and culminates in polarizing political conflict. Conflict increases demand for authority to resolve difference. Rule of law consisting of universal rules is sacrificed in favor of human discretion. Rule of law cannot resolve incommensurable differences. The more heterogeneous a polity the lower the trust the more demand for authority the more discretion the more corruption.

That those on the left feel they need to be thought of as victims to get ahead is well known and has been established behavior for thirty years or more. I will agree, it has gone to absurd lengths lately, almost comical.
It is also revealing as those who claim the greatest level of victimhood do not realize that they are widely perceived as weak, cowardly whiners that have no redeeming qualities and are, quite frankly embarrassing to other human beings. These people run the gamit from those who feel they have to be seen as persecuted to be liked and aggrieved to get ahead. What they don’t see is that a majority of people see a person in that situation, one who is unwilling to take even the slightest action on their own to advance their situation and to perhaps understand that it is possible that it is they who are wrong, not the rest of the world. They are often simply seen only as as an apathetic loser, too lazy to change and too rigid and self adsorbed to see it is up to them to change because they are too narcissistic and elitist to accept the fact that it just could them who need to change and that the rest of the world is correct.
Rich in New Mexico.

I would like to know what type of victimhood it is when a large majority complains of harassment and abuse from a minority group. You could take the example of the Palestinians moaning about the atrocities of Israel to the United Nations and the world in general.

I would like to be so bold as to offer a holistic model of interacting with SJW’s, rather than a dualistic one. Although it is easy to ridicule the SJW’s campaign for their “right to not be offended” since it relinquishes any idea of self-mastery in the face of negative stimulus, it also calls attention to the importance of decent human conduct. And you can’t petition for people to have greater egoic resilience without also sounding like you’re requesting the freedom to be crude and inconsiderate, depending on the strength of others to capacitate our ignorance (let’s recall how obnoxious the person is who brandishes the ol’ “What? I just call it like I see it. Don’t be so sensitive”). That is of course a completely individualistic framework, which creates a dualistic framework of us vs. them in a futile competition of Who Can Achieve Greater License To Be Weak. Ultimately, putting aside all of the individualist arguments of “you need to toughen up for the big bad world you will find yourself in after university”, a holistic argument must be added to this: everyone needs to be strong. Everyone could benefit from treating each other better. It’s just that the process of finding that mutual understanding of good conduct needs to be more fluid than its current state. I elaborate here.

I used to be a SJW-type and it was largely due to personal reasons yet I assumed and believed that I was right. I was right about nearly everything after only reading very little. The more I got mindful and the more I reflected concomitant with going to university, the less of a SJW I become. After reading hundreds of books, I can safely say that is was these two reasons. Personal/Familial plus Ignorance. I do subscribe to the notion that personality matters a lot but ultimately for me is I got really educated and now I see hundreds of thousands of variables as opposed to like….two variables.

We have an idiot-narcissist problem. Now: I literally don’t care what I want for the world because I am but a small pebble; culture matters and we are all mostly trying to do the same thing. We all think we are the “hero” and as Haidt once said, naive realism is why we can’t nice things.

We need responsibility yet a huge part of us rebels at that. We need processes, rules, and a foundation based on philosophy, history, cultural and biological evolution, anthropology, Long History, political science/game theory, and so on.

Simply reading people and sites and magazines that I disagree with has changed my entire life.

I’m sure I will be at least partially wrong as I’m not a sociologist nor an anthropoligist.

It seems that a stable authority with the monopoly of violence was at the core of the transition between the honor and diginity cultures. In a human society, whoever is the strongest warrior is king, the alpha, and everybody else is below him. In a place where only the authority can exert violence, we’re all below alpha.

Now, for pampered students in universities, their physical comfort combined with a preceived low status could be triggering an instinct for survivability that depends on them being the lowest and most fragile of the members of the group.

In this sense, all they will care about is to be aligned to groupthink and completly dependent on the strongmen. They, as any othe person, compete to achieve a higher status, but they limit their fight to that lowly tier they belong to by having a really nice Instagram profile to show off and by ousting the deviant racist from the group.

It is worth considering that much of what has stirred up the right for a long time has been exactly such micro aggressions, and has spawned a culture of victimhood. George Will especially wrote many of his columns complaining about some sort of slight by a liberal somewhere, and “deplorables” was certainly a micro aggression.